"At PC World, we spend most of our time talking about products that make your life easier or your work more productive. But it's the lousy ones that linger in our memory long after their shrinkwrap has shriveled, and that make tech editors cry out, 'What have I done to deserve this?' Still, even the worst products deserve recognition (or deprecation). So as we put together our list of World Class winners for 2006, we decided also to spotlight the 25 worst tech products that have been released since PC World began publishing nearly a quarter-century ago."

50 Cent is the only compelling reason I've ever heard not to like the iPod.

You can't use any music player with thousands of songs blindly. You either leave it playing on shuffle or leave it playing on a specific album/artist. If you want blind control, your only choice is the Shuffle or some other low-end consumer flash device that holds maybe one or two CDs.

All of the files in the weird hierarchy are id3 tagged, so iTunes can sort them back into their original glory. If you really want to micromanage what you carry, it's easily done with an iTunes playlist, and if you just want more fine-tuned control, there are third party and FOSS apps to do it.

The backlight can be turned off completely.

It's a music player, not a dictation machine, but accessories exist.

I was paranoid about the battery, too, before I owned one, but battery life is hours and hours. It's doing more harm to the battery that I can't drain it fast enough. And Apple has started a pretty good system to take care of the issue. Every couple years, a hundred bucks for a new one. Not bad.

"your only choice is the Shuffle or some other low-end consumer flash device that holds maybe one or two CDs. "

Wow man, where do you go shopping? iRiver, Creative, RCA, iAudio and several other brands have several models ranging from 512 MB to double digit gigabytes. True, there aren't that many models out there that hold as much as iPods, but iPods alone are no more than a few models and all under one brand. Plus iPods are not cheap, most people won't use 60 GB for the music they actually listen to, so much cheaper mp3 players will provide them with all they need.

iPod is a choice, but not the only choice. And ya know what I like best about non-Apple mp3 players? They come in so many different shapes, sizes, and configurations. Some of them will even play OGG files!

"iPod is a choice, but not the only choice. And ya know what I like best about non-Apple mp3 players? They come in so many different shapes, sizes, and configurations. Some of them will even play OGG files!"

I use my Nokia 6630 for music playing needs, and with OggPlay it can even play OGG-files =P So it seems, mp3/music-players come in many different shapes, size and configurations, some even support calling other people =D